One of the most tedious things about being in a band (and there are many) is attempting to persuade people to part with money in return for being entertained by you. The sheer audacity of it all beggars belief, doesn't it. The times I've urged you all to come and watch The Free French play at Water Rats, or wherever (but usually Water Rats) and then adding as an afterthought "and it'll cost you £6 for the privilege, alright, thanks, cheers." Now I'm sitting here looking at a gigantic pile of unsold Free French CDs and thinking, right, what I should do is give them all away. But even the logistics of that are pretty annoying.

So I hastily compiled a 10-track album, imaginatively titled, I dunno, The Greatest Hits Of The Free French or something. Featuring tunes from right across the career of this pop colossus, from the cheery optimism of "Do You Come Here Often", to the bleak misery of all the rest of them, it's yours for the price of no pounds, no pence.

1. Do You Come Here Often? (2001)2. Living Together (2004)3. Talking Nepalese (2002)4. Fireman (2003)5. The Two Of Us Are Unanimous (2001)6. How Vicious We Are (2002)7. Holiday At Home (2005)8. Cotton Buds (2001)9. Swigging Echinacea (2002)10. Trial Separations (2001)

EDIT: My girlfriend has just emailed me saying: "You didn't include 'Metaphorically' in your top 10 FF list. It's like leaving 'You Get What You Give' off a New Radicals greatest hits. You idiot." So here it is.

I'd happily buy some Free French albums from you (assuming they won't be retailing for £12.99 or some such), but I suppose it is the logistics in the end. Even if you give them away, someone still has to pay for packaging and delivery.

I think pubbing is pretty much all I do. We just haven't co-incided with choice of pub, have we. We should, though, shouldn't we. I've not seen wardytron in ages, either, which is a crying shame, because I haven't written an amusing journal entry in months and I could do with stealing some of his jokes.

As music scholars will know, the Italian instruction Andante at the top of a piece of music means "at a walking pace". Both of the above tunes are a bit blimmin' brisk for Andante. You'd get out of breath pretty quick. They're more like Allegretto.

What I'd have done is: rather than putting the free mp3s up on Livejournal, which is quite a nice, friendly thing to do, I'd have put them up on my website, spent five minutes thinking up a crap pun title and then told everyone it was an exclusive, internet-only, best-of compilation. That way it looks like I've actually done something when I've just stuck some old material up on the web. If I was feeling really cheeky, I'd have stuck a PayPal donate button next to it.

This is all too true. Argh, the boxes of CDs, the gig plugs (I'm playing the Primrose in Leeds this Sunday, Central Station in King's Cross a week today). I have bought Free French albums at proper price though so I can feel...moral or something.

thanks Rhodri! I picked up the last one, but getting records can get kind of costly when shipping to the states. I wished I could have gotten them on iTunes or something. I was just looking into the cost of putting a release on it (through tunecore.com) and it was only going to cost about $10. I suppose then I wouldn't have gotten that fantastic Spearmint EP.